Guest Blog: The Chartered Institute of Fundraising in Northern Ireland

19 Feb 2024 Jocelyn Horton    Last updated: 19 Feb 2024

Paul Montgomery, Chair of the Chartered Institute of Fundraising Northern Ireland gives an overview of the work they do and how you can get involved. 

What is the Chartered Institute of Fundraising (CIOF)?

The Chartered Institute of Fundraising is the professional membership body for UK fundraising. We champion our members’ excellence in fundraising and support fundraisers through professional development and education. We connect fundraisers across all sectors and skill sets to share and learn with each other, so that together we can best serve our causes and communities.

The Chartered Institute has a website full of information to support your fundraising and help you become the best fundraiser you can be. If you haven’t visited the Guidance and Resources page before, get it bookmarked in your browser! It’s going to answer a lot of the questions you have in the months and years ahead. 

It’s a national organisation, with a big local focus - but we also operate locally in Northern Ireland.

What does CIOF Northern Ireland do?

I’ve volunteered on the Chartered Institute of Fundraising’s Northern Ireland committee for a number of years now. We’re professional fundraisers, volunteering our time and experience to help build and support the local fundraising community. There’s real excellence across fundraising in Northern Ireland and we’re here to give it the focus it deserves, connecting fundraisers and sharing those skills so we can all support wider society.

We’re passionate about fundraising and bringing the local fundraising community together. We do that by ensuring we get involved in the right discussions to help shape the environment for local fundraisers. We also host networking and training events and we’re working hard to bring back our annual conference and Fundraising Awards post pandemic.

Upcoming Events

NI Fundraising Forum: Spring 2024

Thursday 7 March, 09:00 - 12:30

Dunsilly Hotel, Antrim BT41 2JH

A morning with the NI fundraising community. This time, investing in corporate partnerships and contactless donations in practice.

The Chartered Institute’s NI Fundraising Forum series continues in 2024. Invest in your charity’s income growth and sign up to the Chartered Institute’s spring event, focussing on two key areas of fundraising for the year ahead.

  • Investing in Corporate Partnerships – the landscape, your proposition and a local success story.
  • Contactless donations in practice – results and recent best practice from local testing in December 2023.

Includes refreshments, breakout discussion and networking opportunities.

Investing in Corporate Partnerships: Denise Cranston, 2into3, with Darragh Collins of Share Discovery Village

Investing in corporate partnerships is like planting a seed for future growth. If you don’t put in the time and resources to nurture the seed now, it will never have the chance to grow and flourish. But, if you invest in it properly, the rewards will be bountiful. This session will focus on the new corporate landscape, building a powerful proposition and a live case study, fresh from Lough Erne.

Contactless donations in practice: Mark McMahon, Trócaire, with Paul Montgomery of the Stroke Association.

November's Fundraising Forum included a great session from Payaz and Give A Little on the theory and options currently available around contactless donations. Theory's great, but it's always good to hear how it works in practice too. This session will look at two local case studies from December 2023. We'll hear how contactless payments helped Trócaire secure additional donations during their volunteer-led Gifts of Change sales in local churches, and how tech performed in the foyer of Tesco Knocknagoney at the Stroke Association's Christmas store collection.

Tickets: Members £14 / Non-members £20

On a first come, first served basis, 5 free places for small charities with an income of under £50k are available. 

Register here: https://NIfundraisingforum-spring24.eventbrite.co.uk

How can people get involved?

We try to do as much as we can, as well as we can, but we’re a small group and we know our limits! We’re currently looking for more brilliant people to join our team.

We’re here for all professional fundraisers in our local sector. So, to make sure we’re getting the right content for members, we try to include a broad mix of voices in our planning. We need people with all types of skills and from all kinds of backgrounds. Our committee volunteers come from both local and national charities, sole fundraisers to department heads and directors, representing a wide range of causes from health to the arts.

We have a wealth of experience in the team, but are fully aware that experience doesn’t count for everything. In our latest round of volunteer recruitment we’re particularly keen to bring in the voice of those new to fundraising. No matter where we are in our careers, we all have something to offer.

I work with a national charity, so I volunteer because I want to feel part of a local community. It puts me outside of my comfort zone sometimes, but in return I learn loads from the amazing people around me and get the chance to connect with lots of fundraisers across the sector, both locally and right across the UK and Ireland. If you’ve ever considered getting involved, I’d recommend it to anyone. There’s no better time than the present, so please visit here or send me a message if you’d like to hear more about joining our local team

You can contact Paul at [email protected].

jocelyn.horton@nicva.org's picture
by Jocelyn Horton

Fundraising Advice Officer

[email protected]

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